Street Art of the Revolution: Festivals of Hope, 1918-1933

In the service of the Bolshevik Revolution and the new socialist state, Soviet artists created floats, murals, posters, models of machines and other paraphernalia for street carnivals, May Day festivals, heroic theater and public processions. This scholarly monograph, like the propaganda art it purports to analyze, is agit-prop. By stitching together period articles, reviews, reminiscences, photographs and official documents, the editors create a deadening newsreel-like pageant. It is sad to follow the garish spectacle of such artists as Alexander Rodchenko, Liubov Popova, El Lissitzky and Vladimir Tatlin creating sequined banners, props for mass demonstrations, portraits of Marx and the like. Historians, devotees of Soviet art and history, and students of communications media are the potential audience for this tome. Tolstoy and Bibikova are Soviet art historians, Cooke a British teacher. (Sept.)